March, 2015:

Today is the first day we were building up rather than down. The block arrived this morning and the masons all but finished laying the block for the garage wing. It was exciting seeing the beginning stages of the walls, including the locations of the doors. Up until this point, all this stuff could only be seen using the power of… imagination.

Never having been through this process, I was amazed at how many different sizes and shapes of block they use. There were special corner blocks, different size blocks for different height walls, different widths and thicknesses.

There were even angled blocks that they’ll use for the master bedroom bump-out.

Tomorrow, they’ll work on the master bedroom wing and the computer room extension.

Today, the guys did some surveying work, marking the edges of where the block will get placed, for the mason who’s coming on Monday to lay block. The also removed a lot of brick from a few places on the house.

In the first picture, they removed the top row of brick and also removed the brick from a space to the left of the chimney. That’s where a door will break through from the existing basement to the hallway into the library and office.

In the second picture, you can see the brick removed from the garage end and part of the back of the house where the computer room will be.

You can also see a lot more mud than a few days ago, mostly because of a lot more bulldozer traffic, but also because we got a huge rainstorm last night and, well… mud.

We’ve got a pretty good site now to get the “missile testing” comment from the movie The Money Pit.

As I posted yesterday, we were expecting the footers to be poured either tomorrow (Friday) or Monday. However, Wayne hedged his bets and ordered the concrete for today… and ended up getting everything ready and inspected in time for the delivery. So our footers were poured today instead of first thing next week!

They poured for the master bedroom wing, the garage wing, and the computer room in the back of the house. The weather held out with nothing but a light sprinkle of rain at one point that didn’t affect their work at all, so it was the perfect day to do it.

Not only did they get everything poured today, but they had everything so precisely ordered that they ended up with only half a yard of concrete left over. Evidently that made one of the guys kind of nervous ("That’s cutting it too close.") but it worked out perfectly.

They also spent time removing the bricks from the end of the house next to the garage wing. We discovered that, back in 1977 when this house was built, it seems they didn’t know about house wrap or moisture barriers or that type of thing because the plywood underneath the brick was really badly decayed. Of course, it’s been 38 years, so I guess that’s not all that bad for having no moisture barrier. I imagine that will be the case for the rest of the house, too. Fortunately, it’s all coming off, so that issue will be resolved by the time we’re done.

Today they finished digging the footers for the garage wing and the computer room, adding substantially to the dirt pile height. They started staking out the footers for the surveyor to check and will finish that up tomorrow morning. If they get done early enough, the surveyor can come out to do the inspection tomorrow which means, if approved, Wayne (from Co-Del Construction) can go ahead and order the concrete. So the earliest the concrete could get poured is Friday, but they’re expecting that it’ll probably be Monday.

Fortunately, the weather folks are forecasting pretty spectacular weather next week, so the pouring, blocking, and whatnot (always with the whatnot) should go without a hitch. Before we know it, they’ll be framing it up and we’ll be all “Holy crap! It’s a house!”

In the meantime, here are a number of pictures from “Footer Excavation Day.” (click to embiggen)

Today the footers were dug for the master bedroom wing and the garage wing (mostly). There was a delay when they found that the septic drain pipe ran along one of the lines for the footers so they had to move it. That took a bit more time than expected, so the garage wing footers aren’t completely done, but will be tomorrow morning.

It was incredibly impressive watching the precision of Steve, the backhoe operator. I’d have sworn he had nerve endings on the bucket with the way he was feeling around with it and pulling out rocks, NOT breaking septic pipes, and just barely brushing the sides of the existing structure.

I shot a lot of video and trimmed it down into a short, two-minute summary version of the day’s events.

Thursday of last week, the excavator dug out the area for the master bedroom wing (which will also have the library, office, and guest bedrooms). Today he dug out the garage wing. So we have lots of large dirt piles and an impressive loss of grassy surfaces. Tomorrow, the footers will be dug out. More on that later.

Here are the dug out areas for the master bedroom wing (photo #1) and the garage wing (photo #2).

Co-Del Construction had some excavation equipment out today for some preliminary work. They removed a tree, a tree stump, shrubs, an air conditioner, a brick fireplace, and part of a deck. They also added a temporary driveway and dug up some of the bank to prep it for taking more dirt when the footers are dug out.

More pictures follow after the break (click to embiggen). It doesn’t quite look like the house in The Money Pit yet, but we’ll get there!

Today was our official start day for the remodel! Co-Del Construction was out today to put in the marker pins for the excavation. As soon as the surveyor comes and signs off and the township signs off on the placement (which is already approved in the construction permit, but just has to be verified before they start digging and pouring concrete), then they can come out and start digging for the foundation footers. That could be as early as Thursday, but more likely, it will be Friday or Monday.

Tomorrow, they’ll be coming out to get rid of topsoil and extraneous landscape obstacles (little tree, bushes, stump, corpses, whatever…), so the place will finally start to look like a construction zone!